sick in the city

i know i am a bad blogger. i had all sorts of things to blog about, but last week i was sick sick sick (really terrible cold; last week's office attendance brought to you by tylenol cold severe). then it was thanksgiving, which i enjoyed (despite still being sick.) i went to washington d.c. to see the fam, and we had a great time. i had all sorts of posts percolating about our various activities, including our visit to the incredible annie leibovitz show at the corcoran and my birthday dinner at pizzeria paradiso or somehow just managing to miss michael kors as he also spent the evening shopping in georgetown. ah, family. sunday night i was too preoccupied with the joy of getting to see my dear s again after a long time apart (6 days!)

and monday. oh, monday.

monday i left work at lunch to take s to the hospital. it was an almost seven-hour ordeal, my darling having been stricken by acute gastroenteritis (an inability to keep fluids down or in or anything else.) we made lots of jokes about how it was nothing like tv hospitals (although our doctor was tv-doctor handsome) and i spent a lot of time feeding him ice chips and hounding the nurses for more medicine. on a funnier note, i was in the pantry (looking for those ice chips), talking to a volunteer, and she asked me if i was a doctor. granted, i was looking professional on monday (having come straight from work), but i also look about sixteen, so i had to laugh out loud. i assured her that no, i was just there with a patient. but it did make me wonder, do i look like a doctor? does that mean i am the kind of person who could be a doctor? anyways, we got home around 10 pm and s went to bed and i tried to relax after six and a half tension-filled hours by my beloved's hospital bedside.

so forgive me if all my posts about cute puppies named nico on the subway just flew out of my head. i had other things i was thinking about.

back to the magic soon, i promise.

lovely weekend

i had an utterly delightful, mostly new york kind of weekend.

friday i had brunch with some ladies from work, and we went to boerum hill food company. i had an omelette with cheddar and mushrooms, potatoes and toast with raspberry jam. also, delicious chai. we sat at a big round table with a mosaiced top, and looked out the window, and told stories about our love lives and work lives, and it was delightful. also, we cooed over other people's babies. i really like these women. after brunch, m went home and a and i continued on to target. i have to confess, i love target, probably too much, and i was bemoaning a lack of target here in new york at work the other day and they were like "but there is a target! in brooklyn! we will go!" and go we did. i had pie baking plans, so i bought a pie dish, whisks, a zester, pastry brushes and snowman teaspoons and measuring cups (from that great dollar section! ah target, be still my little mid-western heart). i also bought two pairs of work shoes, mascara and a sewing kit. does a shopping trip get any girlier? i think not.

apres-target, i came home and went to the grocery. as i said before, i had pie plans. i baked the most delicious pie i have ever tasted, spiced apple pear pie with apples and pears i purchased at the farmers market that happens every thursday by where i work. this pie, i swear. i know this is not magical-pie.blogspot.com, but i served it to seven different boys, and i think every single one of them wanted to marry either me or the pie. it's delicious. anyways, i spent friday night baking and then some of the boy's bandmates came over and we drank beer and watched trapped in the closet.

today was a sleep-in kind of morning, and then s and i were off to the village to meet some old friends for lunch. (side note: i wish we had more couple friends. s has this friend from childhood who recently got engaged to a lovely girl, and they live in boston now, and every time we get together with them i really enjoy it.) it made me feel like such a grown-up, meeting friends for lunch at the cute, cozy, delicious french roast, drinking my english breakfast tea, talking about jobs and weddings and the price of condos. after a nice lunch, we walked around the west village (with the obligatory tour stop at magnolia bakery. this is totally magical-magnolia bakery.blogspot.com, have you noticed?) and then came home. i scored a vintage subway map during our wanderings, much to the chagrin of my dear s, who had been planning on buying me one for christmas. i have been thinking about vintage maps ever since a wonderful trip to the transit museum (which deserves its own post later.) we trained home and hung out with the roommates and i fell asleep on r's bed (that vera wang mattress will get you every time.) i woke up at 8 pm in time for dinner and illegally downloaded project runway (i gotta have my fashion reality tv!) and now it's time for bed.

a real famous person!

on monday (i know, much belated) i was walking to the columbus circle station to catch the train home and eat the taco salad i was planning to make (it was no-money mondays) and i was looking in front of me when i thought to myself "that looks like dustin hoffman." he was yawning. and then when i got closer to him and his tall companion, he moved from yawn to words and i heard his dustin hoffman voice, and i got very excited. i had a huge grin on my face the whole way to the subway, and i even tried to call my mother but i had gloves on and it was too complicated. he was very short, also. this is exciting for two reasons:

a) i love dustin hoffman. he has been in a lot of movies i love for a variety of reasons. (see: hook, kramer vs. kramer, i heart huckabees.)

b) i NEVER see famous people. i am famous for this inability. when i was in school, janeane garofolo banked at my bank; i never saw her. (side note: i knew how to spell garofolo, but not janeane, which i had to look up.) matt damon got coffee at my starbucks; i never saw him. ben stiller and christine taylor lived on my block; i never saw them. they filmed sex and the city outside my door; i saw only jennifer cooldige (whom i like very much, but she is no sjp.) i was once walking with my family and bernadette peters was walking in front of us and later they were all "ooh, bernadette peters" and i was like "when?! how did i miss that?!" so for me, to see a celebrity, is kind of exciting. next i want to meet one. or be one. whichever.

curly's and corduroy

my sister has been in town for the weekend, but i had to work today so we met up for dinner in the city. (she is staying with a friend with the most incredible name i have ever heard, but for anonymity's sake, suffice it to say, it is amazing.) sissy and i are both vegetarians, and i love fake meat (more than i ever loved real meat), so i took her to curly's vegetarian lunch (for dinner.) curly's is probably one of my most favorite dining spots in nyc. it is tiny (maybe ten two-person tables and one that could seat five or six) and they give you placemats to color that then get displayed on the walls and our waiter sang and danced around the restaurant and the owner came and talked to us after dinner, asking if it was worth the wait. it was, it always is, the food is really fresh and simple but well-planned and delicious. they don't use any meat, and almost every item can be made vegan (i even saw someone order vegan sopapilla.) i've taken non-vegetarians there as well, and it's always a crowd pleaser.

side note: if you didn't already go to the website, you should. they have a list of famous vegetarians with quotations. did you know russell simmons is a vegetarian? i just love him. he's like the sweet, gentle rap mogul. i mean, vegetarian, spoken word advocate, argyle designer, lisper. he's adorable.

also, this evening curly's gave me another excellent overheard:

hipster girl: so that club she got turned away from? it was for not having on two pieces of corduroy clothing. (male companion mumbles somthing indistinct.) you know what kind of club that is? a club full of poorly-dressed people.

christmas is all around me

i am a big fan of christmas, and all the holiday tradition that entails, but i had not thought about it at all yet, in large part due to my unemployment, and my time being more about countdown to job than countdown to holiday. but it suddenly was winter in new york this past week, and cold cold cold, and i have not been able to find my winter coat, so this past friday after meeting s for dinner (he worked eight hours friday day and then seven hours friday night, poor thing) i took myself shopping. i went into macy's for a puffy coat with a fake-fur hood (i know, i know, so ghetto-fabulous, right?) and i was taken aback by the christmas decorations. and i know that they've probably been up since before labor day, but there is nothing like cold hands and red tinsel to make me feel like the holidays are upon us. macy's just looked so lovely and cheerful and welcoming and it made me smile.

i need to make a list of presents to buy.

i heart nerds

i really do. i love nerds, i always have, i always will. i have crushed on bike nerds, theatre nerds, political nerds. s is a computer/video game/audio technology (in a hot way). and even when i am not attracted to nerds, i still appreciate them, and am thankful that they are there, obsessing over their niche interests, laughing their nasally nerd laughs and generally making me glad that some people are that comfortable in their own skin.

yesterday i was on a packed f headed home from work and a group of jewish nerds (my favorite kind) got on. they were talking about the onion, about how clever and contemporary it is, specifically referencing a recent controversy over the tongue-in-cheek article about the l.l.bean boycott. then they discussed the onion's political satire and how dead on it usually was, and then one of them said "the onion is a tidy little zeitgeist." he actually used the word zeitgeist. (which is defined as "general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time".) it is rare that i think that someone on the train is smarter than me, and it made me smile. he had the best nerd laugh, too. a man after my own heart.

brooklyn vs. manhattan part 2 of a multi-part series

right after i posted my cranky "overheard never listens to meeee!" post, i looked at it and lo and behold, there was something i had overheard. the universe is smiling on me indeed.

today was my first day of work. i was twenty minutes early, i got a tour of the building and met a million new people (none of them particularly "new-yorky", which is a little disappointing--where are the new yorkers? not working for arts non-profits, apparently), i learned the ins and outs of a grouchy old computer program, i charged credit cards for expensive private recorder lessons, i cleaned out my new desk (p.s. i have a desk and a phone and a computer all my own, like a real adult with a real job) of the crumbs left behind by the previous owner, i was taken to lunch by my boss, i wished i hadn't worn my brand new high-heeled boots without breaking them in first, i answered the phone in a scared voice, i left work at 5:45 and met s and his roommate at bed bath and beyond and bought boyland safari essentials, i rode the subway to windsor heights and ate some nachos at clemens, i walked home, i took off the offending boots, i got a present (!) from s, i am blogging. this was a full day, especially considering i spent last week sleeping in, working out and watching movies.

i also thought more about brooklyn vs. manhattan. in round 4, brooklyn has the advantage, because s's favorite roommate wants to switch rooms with us for a couple of months. we would have a bigger room, that doesn't share a french-door-paneled wall with another roommate, and only be paying about $450 a month each. which is tempting, i must admit, the prospect of saving some money for awhile sounds really good. and this morning's commute wasn't even that bad. am i converting? i'm not anti-brooklyn, not by any means; i like the people and their neighborhoods and the cute restaurants; i like prospect park and when the f goes aboveground for two stops and the skyline. but i fell in love with manhattan first, and i want to live in this city for the city living. and the possibility of walking to work is just so exciting. i just need to break in those boots first.

sigh. to be continued. indefinitely.

overheard near FIT

i love overheard in new york and i have overheard many a funny thing, but they never seem to post my excellent snoopings. i guess i'll just have to post them here.

suit on cell phone: it just fell from the sky, like that feather in forrest gump, it literally just fell from the sky.

--overheard on west 27th near FIT.

i just loved this. of all the fell-from-the-sky examples, he picked the feather in forrest gump? excellent choice. very evocative.

tour guiding no.1

though i am not a native new yorker, and in fact lived there only one year before departing to the midwest before making my triumphal return this past summer, somehow i get saddled playing the role of tour guide every time i meet up with someone in the city. i shouldn't say saddled, i like showing people my favorite spots, but as i am not from new york, nor do i know new york very very well, coupled with the fact that i am not a great navigator (and often remember places as being "around the corner from that one place"), i am not a natural choice for tour guide. but it is a role i have found myself playing a few times in the past few months, and one i will play again and again as time goes by and i get to know my city better.

so i am starting a series of posts, tour guiding posts, about the different areas i know and love in nyc. first in the series is union square/the village (i admit it, i went to nyu. but it wasn't like that! i was the poor one!), the area i once knew best and still like to walk around in.

if you want to shop: first we will go to the strand for 18 miles of books. i love books, i love bookstores, and i think the strand is just a sight to see. plus last time i was tour guiding i couldn't remember how to get to the china town ice cream factory, and the strand has a whole section of new york tour books. perfect. then i will take you to my favorite paper store, kate's paperie. i live for birthdays, just so i can come to this store to pick out something unique and gorgeous and special. i'm a total nerd when it comes to cool paper products (i did grow up the child of designers) so i can spend hours in this store. but i wont make you stay that long with me. i'm big on wandering so we'll probably bum around the village, wandering into new places. i still want to find that poster store i used to love and now can't remember the location of. for unique boutiques (is that too cutesy?) we'll walk down bleecker street. i don't have any favorites yet (i'm too broke), but we were headed down bleecker anyway. because . . .

if you want a sweet treat: i will take you to magnolia bakery. i am not a sweets person for the most part (ok, i'll eat ice cream any day, but that's kind of it), and i am really not a cupcake person, but even i will walk a million blocks out of my way for these buttercream dreams. i take everyone here and they always love it. it's my goal to make everyone i know fat, one delicious, ridiculous cupcake at a time.

if you want some culture or history: you're out of luck. ha ha, just kidding! we'll start with union square, which was named for being the intersection, or union, of broadway and fourth. it opened in 1839 and was originally modeled on london squares, but unfortunately that was demolished in 1929 in order to build the subway, so the park we see today is totally different. like most manhattan parks, union square had to be reclaimed from drug dealers and deterioration, and now hosts a farmers market and playgrounds. i like to walk down 5th ave to washington square park, for the best view of the washington arch, modeled on l'arc de triomphe in paris. it was named for president washington and was a place for military celebrations, and is now where nyu celebrates its commencement. the park is a great place for people watching and performances, although it is also home to a lot of persistent pigeons, and there is very little on wings that i hate more than pigeons. there are a lot of sights to see, a lot of famous houses and squares and triangles and circles, so it might take us awhile.

so who wants to come visit me? i'll do more neighborhoods in the future.